


Diamonds Are Gaudy (If Improperly Organized)

by WontGetDown



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Bunny gets beat up, Christmas Fluff, Gen, M/M, Raffles Christmas Gift Exchange, his boyfriend gets concerned, in which Bunny is called out on being gayer than a Maypole and doesn't really mind, modern-day AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:33:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WontGetDown/pseuds/WontGetDown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our favorite rabbit steps into a jewelry shop to browse for a Christmas gift for a certain person. Naturally, things go horribly wrong. Featuring a black-eyed Bunny, a dramatically insulted (and a little more than slightly concerned) Raffles, and a perceptive little old lady.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diamonds Are Gaudy (If Improperly Organized)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nugeyo](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=nugeyo).



> I am proud to reveal my first contribution to the Raffles fandom! This is a present for Tumblr user Nugeyo as part of the Raffles Christmas Exchange, which was a lot of fun and something you guys should get in on next year. I will say that I didn't intend for it to be quite as long as it is (six!!!! pages!!!!), and I meant to make the robbery scenes more dramatic - but I thought I'd better focus on the Christmas fluff instead, since that was their secondary request. (I tried to write something with them in school, I really did, but this one turned out significantly better.)
> 
> I hope you like it, even though it's not ENTIRELY what you asked for and it is also ~3 days late! I don't necessarily get things done fast, but I do get them done. *slinks out*

I wasn’t entirely sure how I found my way into the jewelry shop. In retrospect, it had probably been the gigantic, rather gaudy diamond necklace being displayed in the shop front window. Years of association with A.J. Raffles – publicly renowned star cricket player, secretly smug master thief – had caused me to develop both a remarkably improved taste in jewelry and an almost absent-minded habit of “casing the joint.” Regardless, I ended up inside and asking to see it anyway.

I couldn’t have bought it, even if I wanted to, but I couldn’t help but feel like Raffles would have enjoyed having it. More so if I stole it for him – and I can’t deny that the thought crossed my mind – but I was hardly prepared to pull off a heist, and frankly I wasn’t entirely sure I would have been capable even if I _was_ prepared. Still, I hadn’t bought him a Christmas present yet, and it was a nice thought.

“Oh, dearie, I wouldn’t if I were you,” the clerk chirped, her expression growing colored with concern. “I mean, I’m sure your intentions are in the right place, but that…”

I chuckled. “It’s ugly, I know. Aren’t you supposed to try to sell it to me anyway?”

“Technically,” she responded, a smile spreading across her face. She was an older woman, with her graying hair pulled back in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, and I took an instant liking to her. “But as long as you don’t tell on me, I can keep people from buying the ugly ones to my hearts’ content. I can try, anyway.” She tilted her head slightly to one side. “Besides, dear, men don’t usually go for the necklace look.”

My heart either stopped or skipped a beat – at any rate, it quit functioning properly – and I felt my face and ears grow uncomfortably warm. Briefly I considered denying it, but my mouth took matters into its own hands (figuratively speaking).

“H-how did you know?”

She reached across the desk and patted my hand. “Sweetheart, that pea coat is brand-name and costs more than I make in half a year. No straight man cares enough about his clothes to spend that much money on it.”

I blinked. The coat had been a birthday present from Raffles, given to me in an offhand manner with the disclaimer that it had gone out of style and would be better put to use replacing my apparently “threadbare and essentially useless” jacket. I wouldn’t have known a brand name from a discount ripoff at a local shopping outlet, but I’d certainly preferred the cut and style of this coat to anything I’d had in the past. It also helped that it was warm.

“Well, it’s not like it really matters anyway,” I muttered, moving to one side as a taller man expressed interest in a display under the counter next to me. “He wouldn’t even notice me if he didn’t need me to – to help him out, from time to time. I’m really more of a… friend of convenience, you could say.”

“If he doesn’t appreciate you, he doesn’t deserve you, honey. You seem like such a sweetheart.” She beamed that smile at me again, and I felt myself respond in kind. “Now, would you like me to help you find something more appropriate and significantly less tacky for your friend?”

“S-sure,” I managed, but before we could commence the search, the man next to me rapped on the glass countertop.

“Excuse me, but I would like to look at this bracelet, please.”

“Of course! Give me one moment, dear,” the clerk reassured me, pulling a set of keys off her belt and crouching down to unlock the display. While she was elsewise engaged, I distracted myself with a group of men’s rings, attempting to discern which of them would be best compatible with Raffles’ particular tastes. The door jangled as someone else entered the shop, pleasantly humming a popular Christmas carol to themselves.

“Alright, now which bracelet did you want to look at again?”

“All of them,” the customer stated pleasantly, but there was an undertone to his voice that caused me to straighten up from the cabinet of rings and turn around.

The bracelet aficionado was a tall man of muscular build, with tousled blonde hair and a gun in his hand that was currently pointed at the clerk. I’m a little ashamed to say that my first action was merely to stare openly in a state of shock and slight disgust; I had never been involved in the _receiving_ end of a robbery, and certainly not one so crass and purposeless. I at least liked to think that Raffles and I stole from people who deserved it, or could afford to replace what was taken; this poor woman was only an employee of the store, and would likely be fired for what was currently taking place.

I am afraid that, despite my generally quiet (and indeed, almost timid) demeanor, sometimes my mouth takes action before my brain can persuade it against doing so. And so it was that I took a step forward and demanded almost petulantly, “What the _devil_ do you think you’re doing?”

The thief glanced down at me, and I was suddenly keenly aware of our difference in size. “Excuse you?”

I squared my shoulders, feeling a surge of self-righteous superiority. “You can’t simply _walk in here_ and expect to get away with this. You’re not wearing a mask. The shop’s not even closed. This is quite possibly the _worst_ -planned robbery in – in the _history_ of robberies!”

He chuckled. “You’re right. This would be a terrible idea – _if_ I didn’t have help.”

Suddenly, I recalled the other person who had entered the shop. Before I could turn around, however, something struck the back of my head, resulting in a sharp pain and everything flashing black as I fell to the floor.

Amazingly, I was not knocked into unconsciousness. Dazed and in pain, but still fairly coherent, I attempted to shake my injury off as my assailant stepped over me and joined his comrade at the counter.

“Should I shoot her now?” the first man inquired coolly, his voice sounding as if it was coming from very far away. “She’s probably pressed some kind of hidden panic alarm by this point. It might go faster if we just get her out of the way.”

“Nah, let’s keep her around, just in case we don’t get done before the cops show up. The more hostages, the more power we have. Means we can kill one of them if we have to.”

It did not even occur to me to pretend to be unconscious, which might have been a better plan of action than dragging myself back up to my feet and attempting to make a stand. But that was what I did, using the cabinet full of rings to support myself.

My initial instinct was to say something scathing in an attempt to draw their attention from the clerk to me – I was not particularly significant in stature, but my younger body could take rough handling better than hers. However, in a split second I changed my mind, realizing that neither of the thieves were currently paying attention to me and I had the opportunity to take at least one of them on from behind.

Needless to say, this did not go particularly well.

* * *

“Oh, there you are, dear. No, no, don’t move too much. They gave you a pretty bad knock to the face, there. Let’s try to draw as little attention as possible.”

I squinted at her through the throbbing ache in my head and face. “H-how long was I out for? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she told me, smiling gently as she laid a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for being concerned. You’re so sweet. You’ve not been out for long, only a couple of minutes. That was very brave of you, what you tried back there!”

“…Back? Where are we?” I mumbled, brushing my fingers across my left eye and flinching away at the resulting pain.

“We’re just behind the counter. They’re keeping us out of the way in case they have to hold us hostage, but at the rate things are going I think they’ll be done here before the police show up. Oh, sit down,” she told me as I tried to clamber to my feet once more. “There’s nothing you can do, and I don’t want you getting hurt again.”

“But – but I have to _try_ ,” I insisted, sounding wounded. This nice lady didn’t deserve to have her shop robbed, especially not on _Christmas_. As a sometime thief myself, I suppose I was being a little hypocritical, but this seemed undeserved and brutal, as well as entirely too simple. Raffles looked for the _challenge_ in his heists – something which this did not involve in the slightest sense of the term.

It was then that the bell above the shop door clanged, and I heard a familiar voice which made my blood run cold. “Good evening! I was taking a stroll down this way, and I couldn’t help but notice that you fellows seemed to be robbing the place. It’s daring, I’ll give you that. Practically broad daylight, in a streetfront shop like this. I say, would you mind if I just caught up a few things while you’re finishing up? I never pass up an opportunity to save money while Christmas shopping.”

Despite the protests of the clerk, I dragged myself up just enough to peer over the counter in order to allow my eyes to confirm what I already knew in my heart. A.J. Raffles himself stood tall and entirely lackadaisical at the front of the shop, one hand in the pocket of his coat while the other was engaged in propping him up against the doorframe. The two robbers stood in front of him with their backs to me, equally as tall and even more at ease due to the guns they were pointing at him.

“I have to do something,” I murmured frantically, dropping back behind the counter and looking around frantically for anything that would give me an idea of what to do. The older lady clerk, who was really taking the whole situation rather well, gave me a comforting pat on the knee.

“Now now, dearie, if we just stay here and wait a little longer, the police will show up and sort this all out for us.”

“Haha, yes. The police,” I repeated, a dull sort of horror making its nest in my throat. Despite not having actually done anything wrong in this case, I still possessed an instinctive dread of the forces of the law.

“Precisely who do you think you are?” demanded the blonde man who seemed to be in charge of the robbery. As I peered back over the edge of the counter, Raffles smiled and withdrew his phone from his pocket. It was the fanciest and newest model of android phones, and he didn’t know how to use over half the buttons on it. However, apparently he’d figured some of them out, because the robbers took a step back at the sight of whatever was on the screen.

“I’m remarkably close to Inspector Mackenzie – both figuratively and literally, in the current sense. Now, this leaves us with a few options. I could press this button, and he and his men would be in here in an instant. You could shoot me, and they’d still come running in. Or, here’s the nifty third option: you give me what I want, I give you time to escape, and then the police come in and nobody’s any the wiser.”

“That’s not gonna fly,” the blonde man’s partner spoke up. He had swung around behind the counter while the other two spoke, and now he grabbed the clerk and dragged her to her feet. “You see, we’ve got witnesse – ”

While he was still in the process of bringing up the gun to point it at her head, I acted on sheer instinct and tackled his legs. This brought all of us to the ground; as the clerk got out of the way, I socked the robber in the jaw and scrambled for his gun. At almost the same time, sirens sounded outside, causing me to briefly freeze in panic. This gave the man enough time to grab me by my hair and yank my head back; what he would have done to me after that was anyone’s guess, as he was abruptly taken out by Raffles smashing the butt of a gun into his head.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he murmured, his voice low and amused, and in the next second he’d hauled me to my feet and we were running out the back of the shop.

* * *

“The lengths you will go to in order to find out what you’re getting for Christmas, Bunny!” Raffles laughed as we entered his apartment. “Good heavens, I must say that was the last place I expected to see you. You’re not half bad in a decent scrap, though he did get the better of you in the end. Let’s just hope that they received their just desserts from Mackenzie and his crew.”

“Was he really already there, then?” I inquired, still a little confused by what had just happened. Raffles shook his head as he slipped off his coat and went to hang it up.

“Not hardly, my dear rabbit. Don’t be stupid. I was simply passing by, and I saw an opportunity and my _God_ what happened to your face?!”

Before I could respond, the person I loved best in the world had my face in his hands and his own face mere inches from mine as he scrutinized my injuries. Having not had an opportunity to view them for myself, I had gone off the assumption that they were not as bad as they felt; judging by the expression on Raffles’ face, this assumption had been incorrect.

“N-nothing,” I stammered, feeling a sudden overwhelming desire that he should not know of my attempt to intervene in the robbery. “It was – uh, it was just something stupid –”

“Stupid indeed, if they thought they could lay hands on my rabbit and get off scot-free,” he responded sharply, his voice deeper than usual. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“It’s – it’s not really that important?” I managed, confused. Raffles had never been this ardently concerned about my personal welfare before, and while I hardly minded, it seemed strange that he would choose now to act in such a manner. “I was going to go home and sleep with an ice pack taped to my face or something. Honestly, I’d thought getting pistol-whipped would hurt more.”

The corner of Raffles’ left eye gave a vehement twitch, and I suddenly found myself shoved onto the nearby sofa. “Do not move,” he ordered me sharply, and vanished into the recesses of his kitchen.

Five minutes later, I found myself with an ice pack pressed to my face as Raffles hovered over me, his gaze roaming my body in search of further injuries.

“I’m fine, Raffles,” I insisted. “Really. I was just trying to protect that kind old woman who was working as the shop clerk. Needless to say, they didn’t… take it too well,” I finished with a slight laugh.

“They were tasteless and talentless amateurs,” Raffles snapped, flouncing down onto the couch beside me. “Their opinion hardly matters. I can’t believe your eye is swelling shut. They’ve turned you into a cyclops.”

“The most diminutive cyclops around,” I chuckled, leaning back into the cushions of the couch. I turned my head to look at him, and found Raffles suddenly uncomfortably close to my face for the second time that hour.

“Don’t go home tonight,” he said abruptly, and I stared at him.

“Wh-what? I mean, why not?”

“Police. It’s dark. You’re hurt. I don’t know. Why is it a problem? Just… stay here.”

“Is everything alright?” I demanded suddenly, sitting upright. “You’re acting a little strange.”

He snorted. “What a perceptive little rabbit you are. Forgive me, but I imagine I’m allowed to get slightly upset when my sidekick is roughed up by a band of – of truly _pathetic_ imposters to my preferred trade.”

I frowned. “I’ve been roughed up before, and you’ve never really said anything about it – ”

“Yes, but that was on _my_ watch. This time it was sheer luck that I became involved at all. And the very thought of you being victimized by some other thief just _irks_ me to my very core.”

I continued to be surprised as he pulled me into his chest. Had I not known better, I would have sworn we were – well, that we were _cuddling_. But that couldn’t be the case. Raffles was simply concerned about me. He wanted me close. That was it. A.J. Raffles was not given to cuddles, under any circumstances.

We stayed that way for a few minutes, generally silent apart from my occasional disgruntled noise as I shifted the ice pack to a different spot on my face. Then, quite suddenly, Raffles leapt to his feet, causing me to almost fall over – I had not realized quite how heavily I had been leaning on him on the couch.

“Bother it, I can’t wait any longer. Not that I’ve waited particularly long to begin with, but the suspense is just too much. I know that traditionally, Christmas presents are meant to be given on Christmas, but I’ve never been one for tradition. Bunny, close your eyes.”

I did as I was told, leaning forward slightly in anticipation. I heard a rustling sound, followed by approaching footsteps; then Raffles was leaning over me, removing the ice pack from my face as he fastened something heavy around my neck.

“Alright, you can open your eyes now,” he stated, sounding the kind of pleased that he usually only did after a successful heist. Curious, I did as I was told, and was met by the sight of my own startled reflection in the mirror Raffles held before me. My eyes were wide, and most of the right side of my face was beginning to develop an unappealing bluish-purple tinge. But I barely noticed beside the sight of what currently rested on my chest.

“It’s hideous,” I stated, grinning despite the pain the action caused me.

“The tragic side effect of too much wealth in one place,” Raffles agreed,

his eyes reflecting the glint from the necklace that had initially drawn me into the jewelry shop. “Merry Christmas, my rabbit, to both of us. I’ll have it broken down as soon as possible so that we can be spared any further suffering in looking at its lamentable design.” 

I stifled the pleased smile that attempted to leap to my face at his choice of endearment and instead went to unhook the thing from around my neck. “Funny that this would be what you took! I went in there because I saw it and thought you might enjoy having it, for the expense value at least.” 

The tips of Raffles’ fingers brushed lightly against my throat as he assisted my fumbling at the necklace clasp and brought it up to sparkle in the light. “Such a pity, really. Diamonds are so beautiful, yet whoever is responsible for this atrocity has given even the most avid of jewel enthusiasts cause to flinch from them. Really, what we’ve pulled off tonight was a Christmas miracle, Bunny. The world will be better for the absence of this… _thing_.” He shook it in his fist, and it sparkled like a thousand fireworks. I watched it glint, feeling peculiarly at ease. I usually had at least a slight sense of discontent after a heist, but this time I felt pleased, and almost proud. 

“Those men doing the actual thieving were the ones that got arrested, whereas you just strolled in acting the good Samaritan – in a sense – and still got away with something,” I stated warmly. “Every time I think you can no longer impress me, Raffles, you prove me wrong and I stand in awe.” 

He preened. If you have ever seen a peacock, you must know that the show they put on has nothing on how Raffles acts when praised for any aspect of his existence. 

“Let us have a drink, Bunny,” he uttered triumphantly, heading for the liquor cabinet. “A toast, in honor of Christmas, the new year, and our bills paid up through at least the next month or so.” 

I actually laughed at that, bringing the ice pack back up to my face in order to alleviate the resultant pain. “If that, Raffles. If that.”

**Author's Note:**

> IDK man but have you ever been into, like, Target, and gone to their jewelry section and they have a couple of good things but a lot of the bracelets and necklaces are just these giant, chunky, horribly gaudy monstrosities that you’re like “that would be really pretty if it was half the size and had less STUFF on it?" Yeah that’s what this necklace looks like okay
> 
> I haven’t really thought extensively about what my modern-day Raffles AU would be like but I pinned Raffles as being not only older than Bunny, but also a little bit of a jock, and (I assume) those who play professional cricket and were born in the late 80s don’t keep up with technological advances. But since he’s RAFFLES, of COURSE he’s got to be hip and cool and have the newest phone, right? I mean, he doesn’t know how to USE it, but he’s GOT it, and that’s half the battle right there.
> 
> Anyway, happy 2014! Here's to a bountiful year featuring a startling influx of Raffles fanworks. Right? RIGHT. You heard me. Hop to it. (haha that was a pUN get it because Bunny - alright alright I'm going)


End file.
